For Preston, the drive back to London was bliss. He mentioned the several things he had planned for their week together and was happy they seemed to meet with Tommy’s approval. The lad’s face fell only when he recalled he would be returned after a week to the smart, brittle, and pricelessly expensive Mayfair apartment where Julia lived with her boyfriend, a dress manufacturer. The man was old enough to be Tommy’s grandfather, and Preston suspected that any breakages in the flat would lead to a severe frost in the atmosphere.
“Dad,” said Tommy as they drove over Vauxhall Bridge, “why can’t I come and stay with you all the time?”
Preston sighed. It was not easy to explain the breakup of a marriage, or the cost of it, to a twelve-year-old. “Because,” he said carefully, “your mummy and Archie aren’t actually married. If I insisted on a formal divorce, Mummy could ask for and get an allowance from me called maintenance. Which, incidentally, I couldn’t afford, not on my salary. At least, not enough to keep myself, you at school, and her. It just wouldn’t go that far. And if I couldn’t pay that allowance, the court might decide your best chances in life were with Mummy. So we wouldn’t get to see each other even as often as we do now.”
“I didn’t know it came down to money,” said the boy sadly.
“In the end, most things come down to money. Sad but true. Years ago, if I had been able to afford a better kind of life for all three of us, Mummy and I might not have broken up. I was just an Army officer, and even when I quit the Army to join the Home Office, the salary still wasn’t enough.”
“Just what do you do in the Home Office?” asked the boy. He was dropping the subject of his parents’ estrangement, the way the young will try to blank out something that hurts them.
“Oh, I’m a sort of minor civil servant,” said Preston.
“Gosh, that must be jolly dull.”
“Yes,” Preston conceded, “I suppose it is, really.”
Yevgeni Karpov woke at noon with an imperial hangover that half a dozen aspirins were only just able to contain. After lunch he felt somewhat better and decided to go for a stroll.
There was something at the back of his mind—a memory, a half-recollection, that he had heard the name Krilov somewhere in the not-too-distant past. It bothered him. One of the restricted-list reference books he kept at the dacha had given him the details of Krilov, Vladimir Ilich: historian, professor at Moscow University, lifelong member of the Party, member of the Academy of Sciences, member of the Supreme Soviet, etc., etc. All that he knew; but there was something else. He plowed through the snow, his head bowed, deep in thought.
The boys had gone off on their skis to take advantage of the last of the good powder snow before the coming thaw spoiled it all. Ludmilla Karpova trailed along behind her husband. She knew his mood and refrained from interrupting. The previous evening she had been surprised but quite happy at the state he had been in. She knew he hardly ever drank—and never that heavily—which meant he had not been visiting his girlfriend. Perhaps he really had been with a colleague from the GRU, one of the so-called neighbors. Whatever, something had got on top of him, but it was not a partridge in the Arbat.
At just after three, whatever he had been racking his brains for came to him. He stopped several yards ahead of her, said, “Damn! Of course,” and perked up at once. All smiles, he took her arm, and they walked back to the dacha.
General Karpov knew he had some quiet research to do in his office the next morning, and that he would visit Professor Krilov in his Moscow apartment on Monday evening.
Chapter 15
The phone call on Monday morning caught John Preston just as he was about to go out with his son.
“Mr. Preston? Dafydd Wynne-Evans here.”
For a moment the name meant nothing; then Preston recalled his request of Friday evening.
“I’ve had a look at your little piece of metal. Very interesting. Can you come out here and have a chat with me?”
“Well, actually, I’m taking a few days off,” said Preston. “Would the end of the week suit?”
There was a pause from the Aldermaston end. “I think it might be better before then, if you could spare the time.”
“Er ... oh ... well, could you give me the gist of it on the phone?”
“Much better if we talk about it face-to-face,” said Dr. Wynne-Evans.
Preston thought for a moment. He was taking Tommy to the Windsor Safari Park for the day. But that was also in Berkshire. “Could I come by this afternoon—say, about five?” he asked.
“Five it is,” said the scientist. “Ask for me at the desk. I’ll have you shown up.”
Professor Krilov lived on the top floor of an apartment building on Komsomolski Prospekt that provided commanding views of the Moskva River and was handy for the university on the southern bank. General Karpov pressed the buzzer at just after six o’clock, and it was the academic himself who answered it. He surveyed his visitor without recognition.
“Comrade Professor Krilov?”
“Yes.”
“My name is Yevgeni Karpov. I wonder if we might have a word or two?”
He held out his identification. Professor Krilov studied it, taking in Karpov’s rank and the fact that the visitor came from the First Chief Directorate of the KGB. Then he handed it back and gestured Karpov to enter. He led the way to a well-furnished sitting room, took his guest’s coat, and bade him be seated.